[squid-users] intercepting roku traffic

[Amos Jeffries]

On 9/03/2016 4:59 a.m., Brendan Kearney wrote:
> i have a roku4 device and it constantly has issues causing it to
> buffer.  i want to try intercepting the traffic to see if i can smooth
> out the rough spots.

Squid is unlikely to help with this issue.

"Buffering ..." issues are usually caused by:

- broken algorithms on the device consuming data faster than it lets the
remote endpoint be aware it can process, and/or
- network level congestion, and/or
- latency increase from excessive buffer sizes (on device, or network).


>  i can install squid on the router device i have
> and intercept the port 80/443 traffic, but i want to push the traffic to
> my load balanced VIP so the "real" proxies can do the fulfillment work. 

Each level of software you have processing this traffic increases the
latency delays packets have. Setups like this also add extra bottlenecks
which can get congested.

Notice how both of those things are items on the problem list. So adding
a proxy is one of the worst things you can do in this situation.

On the other hand, it *might* help if the problem is lack of a cache
near the client(s). You need to know that a cache will help though
before starting.


My advice is to read up on "buffer bloat". What the term means and how
to remove it from your network. Check that you have ICMP and ICMPv6
working on your network to handle device level issues and congestion
handling activities.

Then if the problem remains, check your traffic to see how much is
cacheable. Squid intercepts can usually cache 5%-20% of any network
traffic if there is no other caching already being done on that traffic
(excluding browser caches). With attention and tuning it can reach
soewhere around 50% under certain conditions.

Amos